Myanmar’s training for non-Muslim police stokes fear in Rakhine

Ethnic Rakhine men attend a police training course as a civilian force will be deployed in the north of the Rakhine state in Sittwe, Myanmar. (Reuters)

SITTWE, Myanmar: Ever since deadly attacks by alleged Muslim militants in Myanmar’s troubled northwestern Rakhine State, Myint Lwin says he has been unable to sleep at night. As rumors spread of fresh violence, even the sound of dogs barking frightened him.
“No one in the village has had enough sleep since last month,” said Myint Lwin, an ethnic Rakhine Buddhist from a Muslim-majority village in the north of the state. “We were scared when we heard people shouting and dogs barking in the middle of the night.”
The 18-year-old motorbike taxi driver is one of 116 civilians to sign up for a new auxiliary police force in Rakhine State, part of the response by authorities to the latest spasm of violence that began with attacks on border police posts that killed nine officers on Oct. 9.
Human rights monitors say arming and training non-Muslims will lead to further bloodshed in the divided state, but Myint Lwin sees it as necessary for self-defense.
“These Muslims are trying to abuse our Buddhist women and people, so I want to protect our country from them,” he told Reuters, wearing his new police uniform with a badge bearing a white star on the shoulder.
Sixty-nine suspected insurgents and 17 members of the security forces have been killed, according to official reports since a military crackdown began last month along Myanmar’s frontier with Bangladesh.
It is the most serious unrest in the state since hundreds were killed in communal clashes between Muslims and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in 2012.
Residents and rights advocates have also accused security forces of killing and raping civilians and setting fire to homes in the area, where the vast majority of residents are Rohingya Muslims. The government of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and the army reject the accusations.
There have been no reports of insurgent attacks on Buddhist civilians.
Chanting an oath of loyalty to the state, the new recruits began an accelerated training program in the state capital Sittwe this week. Mostly Rakhine Buddhists in their early 20s, in 16 weeks they will be deployed guarding border posts in the tense north.
The training is two months shorter than the program undertaken by regular police and the recruits did not have to meet the usual entrance criteria such as educational attainment standards and minimum height.
Only citizens were eligible, excluding the 1.1 million Rohingyas living in Rakhine State who are denied citizenship in Myanmar, where many regard them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
The recruits, who are from across Rakhine, will be given training courses including martial arts, use of weapons and riot control.